Lapay no Ryu
Lapay no Ryu is an Icarii Sith Lord and is the adopted son as well as former apprentice of Gannon no Lapay. He was at one time the owner of Ison, Rattatak, and Uvena III. He has trained several apprentices according to the instructions laid down by his father in the Way of Lapay, among whom are Lapay no Ken (formerly Akuma Sin'kaji), Lapay no Tal (formerly Darth Vaint, also known as Ishmael), and Lapay no Aire. History Even at the fairly young age of 25, Ryu has been involved in a number of activities on his path to gain freedom according to the Sith Code. Early Life (To be added) Son of Lapay The man who would become Lapay no Ryu began his life, as early as can be remembered, as a child on the streets of the Coruscant Underworld. It was there that he stood in Gannon's shadow, and it was there that Gannon spoke the words to him that he would repeat many years later to Lord Vaint: "You have the same eyes as me." Gannon took the boy in as his own son, and trained him thoroughly in the ways of the Sith. For many years, Ryu served Gannon by performing various missions around the galaxy. His skills were honed in combat, not only with his master, but with those who stood in the way of Gannon's goals. Mission to Brijus Before his second death, Gannon no Lapay assigned Ryu on a mission to travel to Toydaria with the goal of freeing from carbonite imprisonment and subsequently learning Telekinesis from the man who was most skilled at it during the contemporary era: Lord Brijus Tiure, the Hutt. When he arrived, however, it seemed that his work had been done for him: Brijus stood talking with Lord Iniquitous. But as Ryu entered into the conversation , his to-be apprenticeship was readily accepted. While there, his relationship with Tiure developed into a rivalry that was not very different from that between his father and the Hutt. As Ryu began to demonstrate progress, Brijus revealed to him that his father had left a holocron in Toydaria's orbit, the key to which Ryu himself unknowingly possessed. Upon its retrieval, Brijus and Ryu were given audience to the wealth of knowledge that Gannon had amassed on the subject during his studies of the Dark Side Compendium. While they were still in orbit, several ships began to jump from hyperspace. Ryu, analyzing the situation, determined that this was an act of betrayal, and resolved to leave Brijus immediately, or else have to slay the man then and there. Upon landing on Toydaria's surface once more, he stole a Helix-class light interceptor and quit his appprenticeship with the Hutt for good. On His Own His escape from Toydaria was abbreviated by the first of many encounters that Ryu would have with flying ships in asteroid fields. He came out of hyperspace over Polis Massa and shortly thereafter had to put down his ship for repairs at the base on the asteroid. While waiting for the shipwrights to complete their work, Ryu took the opportunity to meditate on the knowledge of Sith Alchemy that he had just obtained. Deciding that his meditation would be far better served in practical application, he went out to the surface of the asteroid in search of raw ores. Inside of a mine shaft, he discovered the existence of a taozin, but quickly ended its life by collapsing the tunnel. Upon his return to the base, with ore in hand, he began to exert himself in training. He stayed on Polis Massa for a year, long after the time when his ship repairs had been completed. During that time, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to the mastery of Alchemy and Telekinesis. It was Gannon no Lapay's second death that shook him from his slumber . In a vision, he saw Gannon die on Subterrel. The shock and inability to accept the fact that he was alone in the universe led him to leave his training to investigate the site where Gannon perished. Duel on Subterrel Ryu went to the planet where Gannon had died in order to learn what he could, half a year later. The instant he set foot on the surface , however, he was confronted by the lingering presence of Gannon's spirit. Although Gannon himself had been sent to Chaos, the unnatural properties of the Shadow State that he had controlled at that time remained fixed at the place of his death, and these were what confronted Ryu in the form of his father's body and voice. Wielding a whip-sword made from his own Alchemy against his father's single saber, Ryu was quickly put on the defensive by Gannon's effort to maintain close-quarters combat, in order to prevent the full strength of his whip-sword from manifesting itself in their battle. The greater speed of a lightsaber over a solid sword, combined with a clever play from Gannon, led Ryu to quickly suffer a glancing strike across the chest. At this instant, Ryu countered by shooting fragments of the whip-sword's blade at Gannon's exposed side, which Gannon deflected with the Force. Commenting that forcing him to resort to using the Force was an indication that Ryu's skills had improved, Gannon ignited a second lightsaber, shortly followed by the remaining five lightsabers to use the Seven Sabers of Lapay style. Ryu countered this attack of desparation by fragmenting the rest of the sword, and covering the seven lightsaber blades with the metal pieces so that they became heavier and therefore far less destructive. In response, Gannon laughed, and turned away, disappearing from sight. Ryu called for him to wait, to which the voice of Gannon responded that waiting for Ryu was something that he had never done, in life or death. The presence converted its form to a black spear, which shot into Ryu's chest, forming a black X-shaped tattoo. This was in fact the Shadow State energies being transferred to a new host, and under the influence of extreme Dark Side energies surging through his body, Ryu lost consciousness. Arrival on Ison Managing to crawl back into the ship, Ryu engaged the autopilot and promptly lost consciousness again. The Helix-class light interceptor arrived at the nearby space station, Ison, with Ryu barely hanging on and requesting assistance from anyone willing to give it, but there was no response. On approach to the station, his ship was once again subjected to damage by debris, and spun out of control into the landing bay. Just before losing consciousness and again just after awakening, Ryu heard the voice of Gannon no Lapay inside his head and attributed the cause to the new presence of the Shadow State tattoo he had been forcefully given. Assessing his injuries from the crash, Ryu staggered to the Hangar Control Room and evacuated the bay, ship and all, into space, thereby stranding himself on the station. Ryu then made his way into the station's interior, where he proceeded to use Dominate Mind to kill the entire skeleton crew of guards who still defended the station in the name of Darth Heritor. The Ison Initiative Still recovering from his wounds, Ryu nonetheless began to explore his new home almost immediately, plundering from the bodies the duster coat which would eventually become his trusted weapon, Freedom. On his first day, he found a logbook and read parts of it, coming across the name 'Quaestor Verus' for the first time. At this time, too, Ryu first began to practice using Force Sight. In the uncharted sectors of the now-defunct station, where a lack of power meant pitch darkness, Ryu found it to be an indispensable addition to his skills in order to move around without alerting anything to his existence by using a lamp. With this tool for investigation, he began to probe the findings of the one called Quaestor Verus. Verus had been the man who built the space station, Ison II, and who had begun the Super Trooper Experiment (S.T.E.) program among many other projects on Ison. He was a scientist and a Forceful, and the mysteries that he delved into were never fully discovered by Ryu. In addition to the S.T.E., he also did research on the nature of lightsaber crystals. His findings became valuable to Ryu, particularly in the methods he detailed for synthesis of artificial lightsaber crystals. Not long after Ryu's arrival, a woman named Dice came to the station. He confided to her his plan for the station: to use it as a hub through which he might find the other members of the Phalanx which his father had built. He himself did not understand why he wanted to meet them, but his goal was clear in his mind, even then. Their discussion was cut short by the arrival of an assassin droid which activated by the response of a Thiassen crystal housed in its body that reacted to Ryu's presence. Still in a weakened state, Ryu was quickly knocked out by an electrical burst from the droid, which then turned its attention to Dice. She brought out her lightwhip and engaged it in combat. Ryu, meanwhile, received a vision while he was still unconscious in which he encountered Darth Vihata for the first time. Dice struggled against the droid, enjoying modest amounts of success, but making little real progress. As Ryu stirred from his slumber, she succeeded in lopping off one of the droid's arms, but it was not until Ryu managed to regain his head enough to use Telekinesis in conjunction with his whip-sword to pin it on the ground as the ceiling of a segment of the hallway collapsed above it that the threat was ended for good. Just then, the doors to the hangar opened once more, and Ryu and Dice went together to investigate the source. As it turned out, a team of Vor scientists had come to the station. These Vor were devotees to the religion of Seleevan Khar, who fashioned himself to be a god among this people. Their reference to Ryu as a heretic and promise of imminent cleansing of the station led them into direct conflict with Ryu's goals, and he responded with hostility, proclaiming, "this is MY station!" But, interrupting their conversation, the arrival of a heavily damaged ship called the Bleeding Heart and Heritor's remnant from the orbital mines put a hold on the confrontation between Ryu and the Vor team. The men from the Bleeding Heart ''who came to the station were led by Dr. Tacky Joe, and, due to the repairs which needed to be made, would stay for a while. Heritor's men were led by Captain Gaby, and opposed the Vor boldly, siding with Ryu at nearly every turn. The Vor led by Dr. Kiktikle were quick to anger, and their actions led at one point to the death of a Vor at Dice's lightwhip. Ryu carefully defused the situation, and thereafter everyone tended to go about their own business. Ryu continued to explore the station with Dice, and began to practice Art of the Small after being visited in another dream by himself from the future. The Thiassen crystal that they had liberated from the assassin droid proved useful for this. On one expedition, they found the center of the station, which Ryu described as an 'impenetrable veil of Dark Side energy'. And, around this time, they first found mention in a partially-destroyed diary of another failed military experiment from Quaestor Verus, on the man named Solus. Solus was the being who would plague the inhabitants of Ison ever after. He was a Taung, and he was given immense power through the experiments of Quaestor Verus. Made dead to the Force, and equipped with active camouflauge, the most dangerous aspect of him was his ability to be invisible from all conventional and Force-based methods of detection (including Force Sight, due to being Force-dead) at will. His armament was equally dangerous; he wielded a battle-axe and a lanvarok, wrist-mounted vibroblades, grappling wire, grenades, blasters, a flamethrower, and a jetpack. His Taung heritage was already aggressive and skilled in combat, but these elements were enhanced by the experiments. His sanity had long been gone by the time Ryu and company came to be in the station. In preparation for what he guessed would be coming, Ryu attempted to train Dice to use the Force in a more substantial way than she had been able to up until this point. But the onset of Solus' attacks came without warning to an unfortunate pair of Vor, who had been sent to look for the laboratories in the depths that Ryu had found. It so happened that Ryu was walking in the uncharted areas as well. He met up with Captain Gaby and was discussing the matter of the Taung with them, but Solus was there as well, without them even realizing it. He picked off one of the men with grappling wire, and as he was dragged off, Ryu ran after the body. Solus, however, had rigged it as a trap, and Ryu was chasing a misdirection. With him away from the unsuspecting troops, the Taung fired his lanvarok into their midst, wounding many and killing some. Solus began to purr with amusement as confusion set in. In short order, Ryu realized his mistake. He turned around and ran back the other way, coming across the unfortunate grisly scene. As the details of the attack were explained, Dice also arrived on the scene. Solus chose that moment to strike out again, shooting a flamethrower into their midst. Ryu, however, traced the plume of fire back to its source and thrust his whip-sword in that direction. It extended towards the hidden man, and some shards found their mark. However, the far greater danger was to Ryu, who was severely burned and then burned again with frost striking from the explosion of a CryoBan grenade that the Taung tossed into their midst. As the Taung retreated with satisfaction from the brief encounter, Ryu called Dr. Tacky Joe and requested that the medical team of the ''Bleeding Heart take care of the wounded. In consultation with Dice, they quickly formed a plan to deal with the Taung, revolving around the fact that one of the shards of Ryu's sword had been embedded in his body, which they could use to locate him. As Dice finally progressed to the point where she could use Force Sight, Ryu confessed his love for her. The moment was interrupted, however, by a brutally rough Nautolan doctor from the Bleeding Heart ''who came to tend to Ryu's burns. Farewell to the Crew From Moff to Supreme Military Commander: The Imperial Remnant Ryu's Greatest Son The Battle of Kuat Onto Felucia and Into the Sarlacc Arrival on Terellia A New Apprentice Post-Apocalypse Rattatak Return to the Galaxy The Quest for Dimension Shift Weapons and Equipment Trogdor ''See also: Trogdor (gallery) Crisis & Crux Freedom Devient Force Powers and Abilities Write the first section of your page here. Category:Characters